Dataset

Los Angeles Urban Ocean Expedition 2019

OBIS USA Open in mapper Explore occurrences

In 2019 (late August to early September), the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County led a two-week expedition to the urban ocean waters of the Los Angeles region to improve our knowledge of Southern California marine biodiversity. This program brought together the best taxonomists and local collectors in an internationally recognized, intensive methodology to collect, live-identify, curate, and DNA barcode as many species as possible. The pop-up marine science lab at AltaSea processed fresh samples from research ships and live specimens from SCUBA divers. A team of leading taxonomists assembled for the event sorted, identified, and sampled specimens for genetic analysis, all day, every day. This also was a wonderful opportunity for the public to take a peek into a major marine research program being carried out at the coast of a major urban center. The Los Angeles Urban Ocean Expedition was a program of the Marine Biodiversity Center at the Natural History Museum.

Published: March 04, 2026 at 04:41

License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 License

URL: https://ipt.vertnet.org/resource?r=lacm_lauoe2019

Contacts:

Regina Wetzer
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Jenessa Wall
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Adam Wall
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

N. Dean Pentcheff
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Kathy Omura
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Leslie Harris
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

4,051
occurrence records
1,289
taxa
847
species

Taxa

Missing and invalid fields

Field Missing Invalid
maximumDepthInMeters 409
10.1%
minimumDepthInMeters 409
10.1%
occurrenceStatus 4,051
100.0%
scientificNameID 43
1.1%

Quality flags

The OBIS data quality flags are documented at https://github.com/iobis/obis-qc.

Flag Dropped Records
NO_DEPTH 409
10.1%
ON_LAND 257
6.3%
DEPTH_EXCEEDS_BATH 76
1.9%
NO_MATCH 43
1.1%
NO_ACCEPTED_NAME 1
0.0%

Measurement types

DNA derived data